Political economy and rural resilience: a case study on state and companies from Japan

The research aims to investigate how the state and companies can shape the resilience of rural Japan, whereby resilience indicates those efforts to alleviate the exhaustion of regional economies and allow their future reproduction in the context of the post-demographic transition. It has been accepted that ‘rural’ theories do not exist, and there have been intense debates on the usefulness of the concept, especially in approaching rural problems. The research leverages on two approaches of the rural, the rural as a locality and the rural as a social representation, to argue that resilience can be understood by looking at the actions and beliefs of those who can shape the rural: the state and companies. Starting from one policy intervention, the research explores through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 38 companies in rural Japan how the theories proposed by the state to create resilience unfold in two localities and how they intersect with the practice and understandings of rural companies. The main findings suggest that the theories and measures to create rural resilience advanced by the state, which concern changes in working practices and agricultural reforms, might have little impact on the capacity of local socio-economies to reproduce themselves in the future. Serious limitations also emerge concerning companies’ capacity to upgrade the local socio-economic fabric. The attempted theoretical contribution of the research is to provide a case where the capacities of state and private economic agents in creating rural resilience can be observed simultaneously rather than separately. It tries to offer a more nuanced vision around the interrelationships between the role of states and companies in forging the future of the rural. Empirically, the research shows how Japanese rural companies are adapting to and confronting the challenges that demographic changes create and how in so doing they might build rural resilience.